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Cover image for Part-89: 🔄 Kubernetes Deployments: Rollbacks & Rolling Restarts in GCP (Google Kubernetes Engine)
Latchu@DevOps
Latchu@DevOps

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Part-89: 🔄 Kubernetes Deployments: Rollbacks & Rolling Restarts in GCP (Google Kubernetes Engine)

#kubernetes #cloud #devops #learning

Kubernetes Deployments: Rollbacks & Rolling Restarts

In this guide, we’ll learn how to:

  • Rollback a Deployment to a previous version
  • Rollback to a specific revision
  • Perform Rolling Restarts of an application

By the end, you’ll understand how Kubernetes ensures safe rollbacks and seamless restarts with zero downtime.

📌 Step 00: Introduction

Kubernetes provides two main rollback strategies:

  • Rollback to Previous Version → Quickly revert to the last known good state.
  • Rollback to Specific Revision → Revert to any earlier revision tracked in rollout history.

Additionally, Rolling Restarts allow you to restart pods in a controlled, zero-downtime manner.

🔹 Step 01: Rollback Deployment to Previous Version

1️⃣ Check Rollout History

kubectl rollout history deployment/my-first-deployment
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2️⃣ Review Each Revision

Check annotations and images used in previous revisions.

kubectl rollout history deployment/my-first-deployment --revision=1
kubectl rollout history deployment/my-first-deployment --revision=2
kubectl rollout history deployment/my-first-deployment --revision=3
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3️⃣ Rollback to Previous Version

This will rollback to the last working revision.

kubectl rollout undo deployment/my-first-deployment
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Verify history again:

kubectl rollout history deployment/my-first-deployment
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📌 Observation: The rollback creates a new revision (example: rollback from v3 → v2 becomes revision 4).

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4️⃣ Verify Deployment, Pods, and ReplicaSets

kubectl get deploy
kubectl get rs
kubectl get po
kubectl describe deploy my-first-deployment
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5️⃣ Access Application via Public IP

kubectl get svc
http://<External-IP>
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✅ You should see Application Version: V2.

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🔹 Step 02: Rollback Deployment to a Specific Revision

1️⃣ Check Rollout History

kubectl rollout history deployment/my-first-deployment
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2️⃣ Rollback to a Specific Revision (Example: Revision 3)

kubectl rollout undo deployment/my-first-deployment --to-revision=3
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3️⃣ Verify History

kubectl rollout history deployment/my-first-deployment
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📌 Observation: Rolling back to revision 3 creates a new revision 5 entry in rollout history.

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4️⃣ Access Application via Public IP

kubectl get svc
http://<External-IP>
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✅ You should now see Application Version: V3.

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🔹 Step 03: Rolling Restarts of Application

Sometimes you just need to restart all Pods without changing the image. Rolling restarts replace Pods one by one, avoiding downtime.

# Rolling Restart
kubectl rollout restart deployment/my-first-deployment

# Verify Pods are being recreated
kubectl get po
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📌 Observation: Old Pods terminate gracefully, and new Pods come online one by one.

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✅ Recap

In this guide, we covered:

  • Rollback to previous version → Fast recovery from failures
  • Rollback to specific revision → Granular control with revision history
  • Rolling restarts → Safely refresh all Pods without downtime

🎯 With Kubernetes in GCP, you get built-in resilience, fast recovery, and seamless restarts.

🌟 Thanks for reading! If this post added value, a like ❤️, follow, or share would encourage me to keep creating more content.

— Latchu | Senior DevOps & Cloud Engineer

☁️ AWS | GCP | ☸️ Kubernetes | 🔐 Security | ⚡ Automation
📌 Sharing hands-on guides, best practices & real-world cloud solutions

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